The ancient Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and author of The Art of War, Sun Tzu, famously said:

“Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.”

Good advice, unquestionably. But first, shouldn’t one be able to identify those enemies?

In his inaugural address to the nation yesterday, Donald Trump made a number of gaffes, which I won’t detail here. But one in particular bothered me, for two reasons: first, because it showed his lack of knowledge concerning a very worrisome foreign alliance; and second, because he verbally made an adversary of Spain — in reality, a staunch ally of the United States, and a member of both NATO and the EU.

The alliance is called BRICS. It was the brainchild of Vladimir Putin, and originally was named BRIC in 2009 for its four founding member nations: Brazil, Russia, India and China. The name was changed to BRICS in 2010, when a fifth member joined: South Africa.

Trump said it was Spain.

No! No! Not Spain! South Africa!

BRICS has since expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia. And its undisguised purpose is to displace the Western alliances as the sole dominant political and economic world power. Nothing less.

So let’s get the membership straight, shall we? Because it’s hard to imagine Spain being part of that, or any, anti-Western confederacy.

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As an aside, I note that Sun Tzu also said: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Smart man. It’s too bad that he lived in the wrong millennium.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/21/25